


The Shadow's Heart

by LadyYlla



Series: The Heart Series [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Epic Friendship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 12:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19109704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyYlla/pseuds/LadyYlla
Summary: Pansy's back to help Harry solve the case of a strange bloodstained letter, but her psychic abilities aren't behaving. A one-shot about helping lost souls and maybe learning about her own in the process. Rated M for dark themes and mature language.





	The Shadow's Heart

Pansy, psychic, potion master, wife, and, some might say, the biggest nuisance of all time, stopped mid stride to examine a dark corner of the Auror Office she never paid any particular attention to before in her life.

How many thousands of times had she walked by this very spot without noticing the threatening force of darkness oozing from the empty corner where wall met wall? The plain beige painted drywall suddenly a menace, a haunting undertone of ghostly whispers practically crawling in her direction.

Her breath frosted in front of her face. "Hello Horror Movie, my name is Pansy Longbottom, nice to meet you."

"Everything all right?" Harry, Auror, wizard, husband, though not her husband, and some might say the biggest hero to ever walk the earth, asked from his place by her side.

"What happened here?" she managed to ask, though the chill of the corner had her shivering in her boots and forgetting all about the blood stained letter Harry had been yammering about.

On occasion, she lent her psychic services to the Auror Department when they ran into a problem they couldn't solve on their own. And the kind of case an Auror couldn't solve on his or her own was a weird kind of case. Her specialty.

But years of consulting and she never once noticed anything out of place with this corner. Her gloved hands came up and pulled the front of her deep purple robes tighter to her body as the darkness scooped around her, not touching, only isolating. Her teeth started chattering.

She knew darkness.

Her life hadn't been all sunshine and roses, though her husband did have a habit of leaving sweet smelling rose petals around for her to find. Neville was a romantic, and did his best to make up for the hardships she suffered. It was all worth it, in her humble opinion.

But she knew this kind of darkness too. A pervading force, a psychic presence. Something from the beyond.

Nearly nine months prior, she battled with another psychic. A murderer, and pure evil. In the process, she almost lost her life and took her husband with her.

It tried to grip at her. "Harry?"

"Pansy!"

She passed out.

She came to a few minutes later to find herself in Harry's office, in his comfortable office chair with the tall back, while Ron Weasley wiped her forehead with a damp towel.

"Heya, Pansy, how's the head? You didn't bump it too hard did you?" he asked, his kind blue eyes and searching fingers checking for any aforementioned bumps.

"No, not this time," she sat up and her third eye opened, as it so often did when she came into physical contact with another human. Especially her friends.

"Ah ah ah," the tall redhead warned. "Don't say a word."

Apparently, according to some of those friends, she'd been meddling a bit too much when it came to her future-seeing ability. You'd think they would be happy to have a Seer as a friend, but all she got was a ah ah ah and a don't say a word.

She grinned not so politely and replaced his fingers with her own, running them through her longish black hair, wondering what exactly happened to her that caused a fainting. "You see, I felt cold," she said out loud, seeing how it sounded. But that wasn't right.

"It was too much psychic power," she said again, remembering the way the darkness encircled her, the pressure pounding on her psychic pathway. There were times she burned out that psychic pathway with too much use. "No, no no. Bad seer, bad. Get it right!"

Brain scrambled, thoughts rearranged, neurons fired. Then she said, "There's a Shadow in the office, filled with the promise of no return."

That was right. Though how and what she said made zero sense to her.

"There's a what filled with what now?" Harry asked from the doorway, looking only slightly panicked. He came over with a juice box and a bar of chocolate, knowing her abilities took a physical toll on her if she wasn't careful. Calories helped.

"A Death Echo…" she said, breaking off a piece of the dark chocolate. It felt right, and she returned to herself. "Who died in that corner, Harry?"

"What, by the water fountain?" he asked in surprise. "No one that I know of…"

"Any soreness?" Ron asked as he examined her a little too closely.

"No," she pushed his hand away. "Are you trying to emulate Susan?"

He chuckled, "Poor effort if I am," his words a compliment to Susan's healing abilities. "No. Neville made us promise we would take care of you while he's in the States."

All sorts of warm and fuzzies unfolded in her belly. Her husband took his Gram for a funeral in Boston, and to visit some distant cousins, for a week. She stayed behind because Harry asked her to look at a letter they found, a letter that raised some concerns.

And because she loathed funerals.

Death Echoes were rare, grief not so much. And nothing set her senses off quite like the raw emotion of a grieving person. Neville needed to be with his family, not spending all his time keeping her sane while her psychic abilities bombarded her. But that wouldn't stop him from taking care of her where he could.

"Don't go all googly eyed on us, Pans," Ron chuckled, as if he were one to talk. He would do the same to Susan. "All right, just give it to me straight. What did you see?"

"You know what, I'm not going to say," she teased, grabbing his hand. "Life is supposed to be unpredictable, right? Surprising and sudden. Like a lightning strike."

Ron's eyes widened and he went still, processing her words. "Lightning strike? I'm not…" he pointed to himself, "Am I in danger?"

Pansy shrugged and stood, testing her own balance. "I don't know, I'm not supposed to say a word, remember? Though I'm sure the universe knows what it's doing. C'mon Harry, let's try this again."

They walked from the office while Ron remained behind, stammering a bit, and looking rather scared.

"That was mean of you, Pansy. He's not really going to… you would warn him if… there's no actual lightning strike right?" Harry asked, taking her down the opposite hallway from the Echo that knocked her out, and towards one of the back offices.

"Let's talk about the letter," she gave him a grin, trying to seem normal. But though she hadn't hit her head after passing out, the Echo had given her a bit of a shake. One she didn't want to worry Harry with. Something horrible happened in that corner, she'd just have to find out what exactly that was.

"It came by Owl," he said, getting to business. "The owl then disappeared into thin air. So we can't trace it back to the owner. We tested the blood on the letter and it's real. Human."

Using his wand, he unfolded the letter mid air for her. She read the first and only line, written in slanting, neat script.

No one will ever find You.

"That might be one of the creepiest things I've read," she said, biting back the horror. What could this letter mean? Who was it for? Why did the Aurors get it?

"Worse," Harry pulled out a very old looking file. "This isn't he first one. This is the 6th one The Ministry has gotten. Want to know when we got the first letter?"

He laid a file on the table for her to see. "1513. The second one in 1637."

She read the next four dates on the file: 1779, 1843, 1919.

"I'm afraid that someone is in danger, or was, and we have nowhere to look, no starting point," Harry put away his wand, though the letter still floated between them.

"You know what to do," with her gloved hand, she patted his arm briefly, once, but still she got a… whiff of a vision. Any contact had her seeing double, and by that she meant a vision. But this wasn't a premonition of something to come. More like a knowing, a gut feeling. Something that happened often enough that she wasn't concerned.

But lately, even the briefest of touches had her in overdrive. Like earlier. One direct touch as Ron brushed his fingers through her hair, checking that she hadn't split open her skull, and she saw vision on vision on vision of him. Working at the shop with his brother, George. Feeding Susan a bite of caramel. Cooking with his mother.

From Harry she felt his fierce loyalty to his wife, Ginny, to his two kids. To his friends and his job. He took it seriously, no surprise, but even with that split second over-the-shirt-touch she managed to find a plethora of threads that spoke of that loyalty, that spoke of his life. And one of them led directly to her.

To Pansy.

Her ability must be growing.

He said, "Just, be careful. Please." Ever since her encounter with Preston Holloway, the psychic serial killer, Harry walked a thin line of wanting to continue to use her, and her abilities, to help people … and wanting her out of harm's way.

"Oh, Harry," she felt all warm and fuzzy again. Just in a different way, one that spoke of friendship. Together they had solved many cases over the last few years. "Best friends, together again," she bobbed her head as she rhymed. Thinking of all the times she helped Harry and in turn, like the golden badge pinned to hip, he shielded her from harm. Their tie was nothing like the soulmate bond she had with Neville.

Nothing in the universe could compare to the empathic and magical bond that connected her to her husband. The one that rooted her to sanity and brought a lifetime of love and commitment. A gift of magic, a soulmate bond. Even across the ocean, she could feel him in her heart, feel his magic.

Feel him missing her.

But she had something special with Harry, something that activated her psychic senses, she realized, something she never detected before now. This must have been a new aspect of her gift, something she couldn't access previously. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it. The bond of two people who were determined to help others, who would fight to protect others. Why else would she have this gift? To see Ron grilling lamb chops while Molly made mint jelly? She thought not.

She touched the letter and stretched her psychic muscles, feeling a huge tug before her entire mind expanded, preparing to spin into the cosmos, to see the future.

Nothing.

"Oh. Well, that's odd."

oOo

Theo and Susan came over, Theo toting his newborn twins. Molly Eleanor, after Percy and Theo's mothers, and their surprise baby Beau Elliot. She wasn't sure where Theo got 'Beau' from, but she adored both of the baby's names.

The visit was a surprise, but a welcome one to be sure. She whipped up a quick, easy dinner and the friends all went out on the patio to enjoy the warm and breezy August evening.

She brewed all day, making it even better when she finally sank into her comfortable outdoor furniture, bare feet in the grass, with baby Beau cuddled close to her chest. Neville might have been across an ocean, their soulmate bond stretched thin, but she would never be alone.

"Perce and I found these," Theo told her with a rare grin that was growing less and less rare lately.

He handed her a few old photographs and she felt pure delight as she spotted herself, as a child, dancing with her mother and father in the old garden at Theo's manor. Another one had her and Theo, a little older, maybe around the age of 10, posing together, sticking their tongues out.

But the third photo was a close up of her mother, Denise. A young Denise. From whom Pansy took all her looks from. Long blue-black hair, bow shaped lips, a slightly upturned nose. Denise's pale blue eyes the only difference between them. Pansy got her violet eyes from her maternal grandmother, a witch she never met. "She looks so young," Pansy muttered, feeling enamored with the picture.

Young, yes, her mother must have been younger than Pansy when the picture was taken. Untouched was the better word. Untouched by the madness of their shared gift, the gift of Sight. In the end, Denise had been a raving lunatic.

Frustrating her daughter on a daily basis, driving them both batty, all because Pansy hadn't known the daily wear and tear of Denise's Gift. Hadn't even known Denise possessed such a Gift.

"Thank you, Theo," she reached over and pressed a kiss into his cheek. For reminding her never to take anything for granted. "Where's Percy tonight?"

"He went to The Burrow when I said would take the wee babes," Theo told them. "Probably napping on the couch."

"That couch is comfy," Susan defended, as Pansy expected her to. Not because of any vision, but on the mantle at The Burrow was a photo taken by Hermione of Susan asleep on that very couch, in Ron's Cannon's jersey, with baby Roxanne curled up on her chest.

Her and Susan both adored that photo. She knew it represented a time when Susan finally began feeling like one of the family, after years of loneliness.

"He just needs a few hours sleep," Pansy found herself patting Theo's hand comfortingly.

The two of them had been friends since before she could remember not being friends. Their childhoods had been spent running around the same family gardens and getting into trouble for breaking into her mother's art supplies and finger painting on the expensive furniture.

Eventually Theo grew to love designer furniture and he stopped wanting to finger paint with her, but that was okay. She didn't hold it against him, because she grew too.

She knew Theo better than anyone, except maybe Percy. Which meant she knew his one, big fat insecurity. That he would turn out to be as terrible a father as his had been. Thormund Nott had a strange notion of what made a man a man, and he died thinking his son was less than human.

"They all do that, don't they?" Susan mused suddenly, though she kept her voice down as not to disturb baby Molly, who she rocked gently. "Whenever they are down or tired, they end up at The Burrow, visiting their parents."

"Percy does, even though they drive him crazy more than half the time," Theo nodded. "A sign of good parentage, me thinks."

"You must be tired," Pansy stood with Beau still sleeping gently against her chest and tugged on Theo's collar, though not hard. "You're speaking in incomplete sentences. Come on, go take a nap in the guest room."

Though she wore her leather synth gloves and she barely touched his shirt, it seemed the world around her shifted as they connected. Like setting the lens of a telescope. She saw the same world as before, but everything looked different.

A bit grayer, a bit slower, and from her psychic vantage point she could see the myriad of threads that tied people to one another. Some hastily put together, some with decoration, others forged in steel and burning with fire. Two silk threads twined together, one a vibrant violet, the other a deep sapphire. It came to her hand and she instinctively knew it represented her friendship with Theo, a lifetime of it.

It fell away and she reached out again, and millions of threads parted to reveal one made of fine purple silk wrapped around a solid tree branch. It seemed to Pansy that the silk could at any moment untwist and free itself from the wood, flying away on the breeze. But as her finger brushed against the ashen wood, it felt strangely buoyant and the silk thread wrapped itself even tighter around the branch. Protecting itself.

"Pansy."

She blinked and the world was right again, except Theo was standing directly in front of her when before he had been sitting to her left. "How did you get there?"

He looked downright furious at her question, taking baby Beau from her arms in a parental fit. "How did I get here? I never left. Where did you go is the better question and why did you feel the need to take my child with you?"

"What on earth are you talking about Theodore Nott! I never went away!... Did I?"

"You vanished completely from sight," Susan told her in a fearful voice, and making Pansy realize she'd also switched positions.

Baby Molly was back in her pram. And the sun seemed a bit lower in the sky than it should've been.

"You've been gone for ten minutes, and you took my child with you!" Theo said, as if he couldn't believe her. He worried for his child.

Understandable.

Except… "Firstly," she held a finger up. "I apologize for what happened, though I haven't the faintest idea what that could be. And secondly, how dare you think for even a second I would let anything happen to my nephew, Theodore Anacus Nott! I love these kids! I would never allow harm to come to them, you know that!"

Only slightly cowed, Theo cradled Beau protectively. "I know, of course I know that. You just… it scared me. Scared both of us. Ten minutes is a long time to be missing, Pans."

Susan nodded from beside him, but remained silent, a true indication of how scared she was.

"It only seemed like ten seconds to me," she commented, realizing just how afraid she was. For two years she slipped in and out of the psychic plane, seeing the future, seeing the past. Some visions she prevented, others she made sure came true. But never once did her body physically disappear.

And never had she seen a gray world filled with bonds and shadows. "What is going on with my ability?"

oOo

Harry came by the next day with the creepy, blood stained letter, and the file with the older letters, to try once again to find the reason behind it. Usually a little touch would be more than enough to pick up some psychic connection, a link between her and the unknown. Especially if she concentrated. Even everyday, mundane objects held something of the people around it.

She went about her life coming into contact with objects without seeing a vision all the time. But once Pansy deliberately opened her psychic pathway, something that took a long time before she could control, a vision was guaranteed. Or… so she thought.

"This letter," she held it in her hands, sitting in the breakfast nook of her and Neville's kitchen, bare fingers running over the textured parchment that could have come from any supply shop.

Standard. Common.

The plain black ink presented the same conclusion. There was nothing special about this letter. Nor any of the others.

Harry told her he had it tested for invisible ink or any charms. Nothing.

Her gift should have been picking up something, anything, from this letter. She even went as far to touch the rust red dotted areas, doing her best not to cringe. Blood was such an intimate thing, leaden with emotion and life. Private. And personal. Even a single drop usually shot her off into the cosmos.

"Neville asked you all to look in on me, didn't he?" she asked when Harry poured juice into a short glass for her, even though it was her house, and he was her guest.

Pushing the letter aside for the time being, she drank her juice and waited patiently for Harry to confirm what she already knew. Ron 'showing' up at her meeting with Harry. Theo and Susan 'stopping' by for dinner the night before.

"Ron already told you so the other day," Harry reminded her, taking the seat across from her. He came down on his elbows and looked tired. He had two young kids at home and a job that demanded all his time.

Instinct had her reaching out, pulling off his Auror Badge and bringing it to her face to examine closely. The leather holder felt smooth on her skin, the weight of gold heavy. "You should keep pictures of your kids in here," she told him a second later, her mouth moving before her brain told it to. "You could slot them in right behind the badge."

He gave her a goofy grin and said, "Gin would love that."

"Yes," she agreed, and returned the badge to his inside robe pocket with a pat.

"I don't know why you're surprised," Harry said, returning to their previous conversation. "You're his whole life, now that you've both agreed you don't want kids, and if it had been his choice, you would have gone to the States with him. He wouldn't have left you alone if I didn't promise you would be protected. Multiple times. He made me promise multiple times."

"You disagree with our decision." It was a statement but she was still surprised. Harry knew full well she was incapable of having children of her own, but in the time since she became a Longbottom, the subject of children came up more than ever.

Nosy reporters wanted to know why she hadn't done her wifely duty and given Neville an heir. Ugh. Did a woman only have value if she bred?

Their friends and family were supportive though, and most already knew the chances of her conceiving a child were zero. But they were all around that age now. Baby fever. Every one of them.

Harry and Ginny had two already. Theo and Percy just got the twins. Ron and Susan weren't married, yet. But her friend had a taste of what having a big family was like. Pansy didn't need cosmic divination to see kids in their future.

A whole bundle of them.

At least Pansy had Hermione on her side, and Draco was more than willing to give Hermione the time she needed. She wasn't ready for kids, and knew Pansy understood that decision far too well.

"No," he argued. "Maybe I'm a little biased with my own experience."

"And you should be, those boys are amazing, Harry. Nev and I adore them to bits. Our decision," she let out a steady breath before continuing. "Our decision not to have kids took a long time to make. But Neville and I are enough for each other."

She didn't particularly know how, nor want, to explain to Harry the intimacy of her soulmate bond with Neville. "Do you remember how I was when we first got together? Lonely and drinking all the time with Theo? Neither of us drink that much anymore, we're healthier, we're happier. Don't worry about me."

"I always worry about you, but I understand. I remember what happened to your mother at St. Mungo's."

Pansy remembered too, she had the long scar on her arm to remind her of the price she paid for her gift. Kids or no, she would never pass on this gift. She reached out and picked up the letter again, pushing all thoughts of how her mother butchered herself, and instead began concentrating on calling forth a vision. Even a knowing at this point would be fine with her. Anything to give them some sort of clue, somewhere to look.

"I don't feel blocked," she mused. Thinking out loud always worked best for her. "I don't feel off. Here. Take my hand."

His bright green eyes went wide with surprise. "Uh-"

"It's okay, Harry, I need to make sure the problem isn't with me," she held her left hand out though she couldn't recall a recent time when she willingly came into physical contact with anyone who wasn't her husband, Susie, or Theo.

She also couldn't recall the last time in the past week she received a vision from an inanimate object and that seemed too strange to be coincidence.

Harry seemed more hesitant than she expected, his hands shaking out uncomfortably several times before he finally placed his slender fingers on hers. "Anything for you," he said.

And that was more unexpected than his behavior, he wasn't prone to emotional statements like that. She didn't have a chance to think more on his sudden declaration because her third eye opened without a problem.

And violently threw her into a vision of the future. She watched herself walking down a dark hallway, afraid, surrounded by… darkness, wearing tight blue jean shorts and a too tight torn up t-shirt with the logo for some rock band she would never wear in a million years.

Above her, the ceiling collapsed and rained down wood and debris on her, the force of it bringing her back to the present. She came to in Harry's arms, on the ground beside the breakfast table, with a tremble still lingering in her limbs. "Yep," she gulped. "Visions still working fine."

"What did you see?" he asked, helping her back up to her seat while careful not to make direct contact.

"Uhm," she settled into the breakfast nook and placed her head against the smooth wood of the built in table.

Her husband built it for her, when she bought the lot in Hogsmeade and had a house built to their liking. She had wanted a dining room table big enough for all their friends and family, but for those mornings when it was just her and Neville, the nook was the perfect intimate setting. A table for two.

She missed him.

"Uhm," she said again, trying to focus. She couldn't describe the cloudiness of the vision, her sight usually much more detailed and clear to her mind's eye. "Me, with you and… someone else… I think? You were wearing one of those ridiculous, what are they called? Rompers? Bright blue. We were in a house, with dark wooden panels… but I don't know whose…"

Shaking her head she finally sat up, terrified. "I need to know what is happening with my ability, Harry. I'm getting absolutely nothing from that letter, but from you? From people? It's like an overload of sensation… I can still feel the impact-"

"Impact?"

"Uh right," she gulped. "The ceiling collapsed on me."

Pansy ran a hand down her front, smoothing out her robes and sliding her fingers back into her gloves. All little motions to help her find her center.

"Did it start before or after your fainting spell at The Ministry the other day?" Harry asked.

oOo

She planned to brew all the next day, to give herself a day without any human contact, but as soon as she woke up, Pansy could feel her connections practically humming with energy.

Similar to her soulmate bond to Neville. She was always aware of it, could always feel him inside her, feel his emotions, know his mood just like he could with her. She knew it was a psychic construct as much as a magical force. It never took energy from her, or Neville. They could only give what was there. Like love.

Neville gave her love everyday. She took that love and gave it back tenfold, multiplying it for him. He did the same, until they were both drowning in it. They could do the same with any emotion, desire, lust, humor, happiness. They couldn't take from one another, because it would harm the other one to do so.

But this, buzzing with connections, felt like being pulled in every direction at once. She could feel threads pulling her toward Theo, towards Percy, the twins. To Susan at St. Mungo's, to Ron at the shop where George and his kids were. To Harry and Draco at the Ministry of Magic and Hermione and on and on and on.

The countless friends and people she knew, all stretched out, trying to take a piece of her. If this was her ability growing, she didn't know how she could possibly handle it. And she definitely couldn't handle staying at home, by herself, without Neville to center her while feeling this way.

She dressed and returned to The Ministry and walked straight to the corner where that strange darkness had encircled her. People bustled about the office, paper memos flew through the air with urgency, and Draco Malfoy stood by, both hands in his pockets as he leaned casually against a far wall.

But his trained eyes were on her.

Great. He'd have a front seat view to watch her exorcise this malevolent spirit for messing with her psychic gift and keeping her from doing her job. Something creepy was going on with that letter.

If Harry brought it to her, that meant they had no other way of figuring it out.

It was her job to find out.

But the corner looked pleasantly beige and plain. No darkness. No breath frosting. No ghostly whispers.

"Are you kidding me right now?" she shouted, throwing down her purse with feeling. "Where did you go?"

Like a maniac, she threw herself against the wall, shouting "Give me ONE vision! C'mon universe!"

The noise of the office dropped dramatically, everyone turning to look in her direction.

"Pans," Draco called, and she knew him well enough to know he was trying to hold back laughter. "You possessed, or throwing a tantrum? Give me a safe word."

"Safe word is suck an egg, Malfoy!" she pounded her fists against the wall, but nothing came. "You give me back my abilities you no good wall spirit! Where the hell did you go? Come here!"

Still pressed flush against the wall, she began to crawl along sideways, climbing over people's desks and chairs in the process. Running her bare hands up and down the walls, along posters and picture frames and fake windows until she reached the other corner.

She didn't care what house plants and file cabinets she knocked over in the process. "Oops, sorry, 'scuse me!"

"She's nuts," someone whispered.

"They say she'll go insane without her husband around!" Another added.

"Everyone knows she needs her soulmate bond, otherwise she'll go mad. Mr. Longbottom is across the ocean, and look at her, it must be true."

"I'm crazy, not deaf you morons," she yelled at the room, kicking over a chair before throwing herself at the wall once again.

"What the hell are you doing, Pansy?" Harry said, stumbling out of his office and staring open mouthed in her direction.

"I'm looking for the spirit that jacked my mojo, that's what I'm doing! Come out! Come out right now!" She pushed Harry out of the way and continued her wall crawl to the opposite of the original corner. "AHA!"

Everyone near her jumped at her exclamation. But she felt it.

A deathly chill. A insidious presence.

The darkness oozed out of the corner and wisped around her. But she once fought off a psychic killer and that experience taught her how to avoid traps and gave her a few tricks of her own. Instead of allowing it to completely corner her, she cloaked her real hands with her psychic ones, her fingers becoming claws of lightning, violet and beautiful… and deadly. She reached forward, grabbing onto the spirit and yanking it into the physical world with a great, sizzling heave.

Connection.

A tiny shadowy form rolled right into the nearest desk, purple sparks shooting off its body before it hopped up on wobbly stubs for legs. The grayness melted into human features, with a bowl shaped haircut.

"It's a child," Draco said, shocked, coming to stand by her.

"You can see me?" he asked in a small voice, shadows fading to reveal tattered brown pants and a oversized long sleeved green shirt on his tiny body. His little hands coming up to his face, pushing too long dark bangs out of his eyes. The kid had desperately needed a haircut when he died.

Then his big round eyes narrowed and the adult expression seemed out of place on such a young face. "Finally! For fuck's sake! I've been trying to get you people's attention for decades!"

Pansy's face screwed up as the child, not more than 4 or 5 years old, dropped the most passionate F-bomb she ever heard. "Excuse me?"

"Yeah, and you!" he pointed at Harry. "What, you're supposed to be some big hero or something and you can't even check to see if your place of work is haunted before you move in? What kind of wizard are you? Are you mentally handicapped?"

Draco broke out into a hearty laugh. "Got you there, Potter!"

"Suck an egg, Malfoy," Harry crossed his arms as he looked down at the child.

"Dunno why you're laughing, blondie," shadow kid turned on Draco without a pause. "I've been watching you spike Melody Crews's tea with some kind of potion! You're just as bad as your dad, I watched him do all sorts of bad things when he came down here before!"

"Whoa!" Malfoy held his hands up as Harry rounded on him quickly. "Calming Draught! With Calming Draught! I swear to Circe! I am not my father!"

"Draco, honestly," Pansy admonished, then she took an easy step towards the kid.

"This one is the only chick around here that knows what's going on, she should be runnin' the place!" Shadow Kid pointed at Pansy.

Pansy took another step. "Sweetheart, what's your name?"

"Oh my name? Benji, Benji Barns and I died in 1982 when I came down here with my mum. I went exploring on my own and got caught in the elevator shaft. Big woop. I've spent all the years since trying to make contact with all these idiot witches and wizards and none of them could see me."

"I did," Pansy said. "I noticed you. You made me faint the other day when I saw you."

He kicked the floor. "Yeah I know, I got too excited. I've been spending a lot of time in the Department of Mysteries. They're researching the effects of the Conjunction right now, I think that's the only reason you could see me."

Pansy blinked once. Twice. "The Conjunction?"

oOo

"Mercury, Saturn, and the moon are all in the conjunction with each other at this very moment, and tomorrow it will appear as if they are very close together, moving on the same path across the night sky."

Theo had become a businessman after school. He ran charity boards and owned companies. But once upon a time he aced his Astronomy NEWTs.

"And what does that mean?" Pansy asked, Benji sitting in her lap gulping down cookies and a cream soda like he'd been dead for 35 years.

Oh wait.

"I'm not a bloody fortune teller," Theo sassed, slamming the book he'd been reading information out of with a loud snap. "It means we're at the right moment in time and right alignment with the other planets that their orbit around the sun is at the right time and alignment to appear to be very close to each other and we'll be able to observe it with the naked eye."

"It's not magic, it's science," Hermione added, perching on the arm of Theo's chair.

"Obviously it's having an effect on me," Pansy argued, refilling Benji's soda cup. "I went somewhere two nights ago. Somewhere not on Earth. I could see the bonds between people, millions, no billions of them."

"And you took Beau with you?" Theo, cranky when sleep deprived, slammed the same book into the table with passion. "Pansy-"

"Don't you start on me, Theodore," Pansy shook her finger in his direction. "Let the Seer think. Just let me think a minute."

Susan once showed her exactly what happened in her brain while she was experiencing a vision. It looked as if the cosmos was bleeding through her mind. Her gift came from the beyond, from the universe. It made sense that a celestial event would affect her gifts.

Her powers weren't growing, not like this. The universe was just… in a mood.

"I can literally go to a plane where these human connections are visible. But I'm not getting anything from objects and nonliving things. And my connection was so strong to Benji that it pulled him into the physical realm."

Benji set his cup down and let out the longest burp she'd ever heard before. "Nice," he complimented himself. "What does that make me?"

"Not a ghost," Hermione hummed.

"A pig?" Draco offered, referring to the burp.

"A spirit," Pansy said, it seemed obvious to her. "You were only visible to me because of my gift."

"But your wacky gift made me solid," he jumped up and held a finger to his neck. "Am I alive again? Oh damn, no pulse."

"You were four when you died, what's with the swearing?" Draco asked, clearly not over Benji outing him as the one responsible for Melody Crews finally calming down enough to become a functional Ministry worker.

"Technically I'm 39, get it straight, Blondie."

"Yeah, blondie," Theo said with a laugh. "Get it straight."

"So the real question," Draco continued, ignoring them all. "Is why are you here? Why try to get our attention all these years? What do you want?"

Pansy turned to the tough little kid who had been a dead spirit far longer than she'd been alive, who apparently grew up in isolation watching the world around him change without the ability to affect it himself. "Some good questions, kid," she said. "Is there something I can help you with? If I can only see you because of the Conjunction, you might disappear to my senses once it's over."

His face fell quickly, obviously not having considered that. That quickly he morphed into a shadow and disappeared from sight.

"Great," she threw up her hands. "Just when I think I'm getting somewhere."

oOo

She told everyone she needed a night alone, especially when Draco made noise about having her over for dinner. It wasn't that she didn't want to see him, or appreciate their efforts to keep her company while Neville was gone, but rather, she wanted to mope in peace.

Because after four days, she was missing her husband like crazy. She wanted to be wrapped up in his big bear arms, wanted to poke his sides and make him laugh. Wanted to roll around in the garden with him, and make out in front of the fire pit.

If this Conjunction had done a whammy on her gift, then she wouldn't be able to help with Harry's letter anyways. She should have sucked it up and gone with him to Boston, funeral or not.

Except… her connection to people right now was off the charts. She was getting vibes just from being around them, without contact. Even with gloves on. Vision after vision after vision. If she had gone to Augusta's cousin's funeral, she would have drowned in the grief of people around her.

And she wouldn't be able to help Benji, if he even wanted her help to begin with.

Admitting to herself she was exactly where she needed to be, she entered her home through the back door and flipped on the kitchen light. Moping sounded especially good just then. She spent the day not brewing, not helping Harry with the letter, and instead groping the walls at The Ministry of Magic, confirming all those people's suspicions exactly how nutso she could be. And what did she get for it?

More questions and a mouthy shadow kid who up and disappeared on her.

"Lovely," she closed the door behind her and locked it with her wand, kicking off her shoes as she did.

For the first time since she received her gift, she felt utterly sick of it. There had been times when she felt scared of her visions, times when she obsessed about the future, or grew angry over things she couldn't change. Times when she meddled in a situation she shouldn't have.

But never before had she felt this over it.

"Well, I blame the moon," she said sarcastically to herself. Mercury and Saturn did this Conjunction thing every few years, no big deal. But throw in the full moon and suddenly she connected to everyone? How fair was that?

Perhaps she'd end up like her mother after all. "How about that, moon? I blame you! What are you going to do about it?"

"Are you talking to yourself?"

She jumped ten feet in the air. "Benji!"

"Hey crazy chick," he crossed his tiny arms and gave her an inscrutable look. "Having fun talking to yourself about the moon? You can't blame all of your problems on giant space rocks you know."

"But I can blame them on you," she sneered.

"Yikes, you're grumpy," he commented.

"Benji, I'm not messing around anymore." She felt drained and exhausted. She needed a bath and a long night of sleep, not … whatever the hell this was. "Where did you go earlier? What do you want?"

He rolled his eyes and gave a dramatic sigh. "What do all dead people want?"

"I wouldn't know, I don't talk to dead people all that much," she found herself copying his eye roll. "A couple of ghosts at school, years ago."

"I want to move on, I didn't want to be a ghost," he told her like it was obvious. Maybe it should have been.

She walked over to the stove and pulled a pan down from its hook, fishing out a few eggs and some butter. "When's the last time you had breakfast?"

"1982, obviously," but he slid into the breakfast nook expectantly. "It's not breakfast time though."

"So?" She fried up a few eggs and cut up some fruit, buttered some toast, and joined him in the nook. "I'm Pansy by the way."

"I know," he took his fork and shoveled the eggs into his mouth with a happy moan. "I've seen you around that place. They all say you're batshit crazy. But I've seen you, you help people."

"I might be crazy," she shrugged and picked at her fruit. "It's 9 o'clock at night and I'm eating breakfast with Shadow Spirit who swears worse than a sailor."

"Shadow Spirit? I like that," he said with a mouth full of egg. After he finished his extra eggs, he said, "Thanks. For the food. Being dead and all, I forgot what it was like to eat."

Smiling, she pushed the rest of hers across the table to him. Something, the universe maybe, caused her to ask, "Do you remember your mother?"

He ate the rest of the food before he answered. "She left me all alone," he said softly, sounding like the child he looked. "She told me to wait and didn't come back for a long time. So I went to find her. And she's dead now."

And then Pansy understood exactly why they were connected, her and Benji. They'd both been abandoned by their mothers.

Deciding to change the subject, she said, "Do you know how I was able to make you… solid?"

"More like… half solid," he argued.

"Okay, do you have any idea how I was able to make you half solid?" she rushed out, annoyed.

"No i-dea. Before, when I was the shadow, you looked like this huge vortex of light to me. I figured you were my best hope of moving on so I kind of… lunged at you," he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You grabbed me and bam, human form."

"Ugh," she shook her head. "Well, I have no idea how to help you move on. Any ideas?"

"You're supposed to be the Seer, can't you, I don't know, look into the future and see how this all plays out?"

His belligerent sass was getting on her nerves. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" But she didn't have the heart to even attempt getting a vision, feeling far too run down.

Then she had an idea. "Maybe you need to help me before I can help you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She pulled out the letters. "I think someone is in trouble and needs my help, but I can't get anything from the only clue I have. These letters. Can you do your little shadowy-pop-up thing and find whoever wrote them?"

"Oh, yeah no prob-lemo! Now that you made me halfway solid, I can go all sorts of places I bet!"

He grabbed the file and disappeared in a puff of shadowy darkness.

And didn't return.

oOo

The next day, five days after Neville went to Boston, Pansy went to Diagon Alley before dropping in on Susan at St. Mungo's while she worked her Healer's shift and told her everything. The Conjunction, Benji, the letters, the gray world with the connections.

"I think it was ours," Pansy said. "Your wand, it's made of Ash right?"

Susan, in her bright yellow Healer's robes pulled out that wand and showed Pansy she was exactly right. Her was was made of Ash.

"It was Ashen wood, with purple silk wrapped around it." Pansy had bought a strand of purple silk from a tailor for just this reason, somehow needing Susan to see the bond as she had.

She pulled the silk from her pocket and wrapped it around Susan's wand, mimicking the bond as best she could. "Ha," she said once it was done. Her heartbeat started racing. "Well?"

Susan shrugged, face flat. "Not sure what you want from me, Pans. Whatever savvy celestial energy you're feeling, I'm not. And," she added with zeal, "I'm not surprised you see me as a chunk of wood and yourself as a beautiful piece of silk."

Pansy scoffed. "A chunk of wood? Honestly, Susie. Ash wood is powerful for healing and creating fire, it's durable, and a symbol of feminine and authoritative power!"

"You looked all that up before you come here, didn't you?" Susan asked after a giving Pansy a hard stare.

"Maybe, but I knew most of it already so it doesn't matter," Pansy shook her hands out. "I'm serious, I know I saw it for a reason, I'm just not sure what that reason is yet."

She took the silk and turned her friend around, braiding it into Susan's vivid red hair. "I'm in overload, too many visions lately, my psychic pathway is totally burned out. But with this Conjunction, I feel hyper aware of things that I shouldn't be. I feel like I'm humming with power. But, I'm going on instinct right now."

"Your instincts are usually on the money," Susan said playing with the end of her new braid before returning to her paperwork. "What are they telling you now?"

Pansy breathed a sigh of relief. This is why she came to her friend. Susie could center her almost as well as Neville.

Almost.

"Benji needs my help, I shouldn't have sent him with that letter," Pansy said the words and knew they were true. "I pulled him into this world. Maybe I can go to him the same way?"

Susan paused and shot her a look, "You know I promised Neville I would keep you out of trouble."

"Hmm, good luck with that."

oOo

After narrowly escaping Susan's lackey's at St. Mungo's, Pansy barged into Harry's office. "Harry, time to go! Oh, hel-lo Mr. Minister," she waved to the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt.

"Mrs. Longbottom," he gave her a bewildered smile at her abrupt interruption.

"Pansy, I'm kind of busy right now," Harry said it as if she couldn't see the Minister standing right there. Obviously.

She plastered a manic smile on her face. They all thought she was crazy, right? Why not play the part. "Sorry, Mr. Minister, I need Harry now. Time to go save my shadow spirit," she marched forward and grabbed onto Harry.

With bare hands. "By the way, I have no idea if this is going to work."

The past few days had her psychic power going totally wonky, but tonight was the Conjunction. Whatever it was doing to her ability would be at its strongest. Benji Barns had been alone for 35 years, stuck in the walls of the Ministry of Magic watching the world around him while they forgot about him. Abandoned by his mother, just like her.

She wouldn't fail him.

Like before, she cloaked herself in her psychic power, covering Harry as she did herself, and concentrated as if she were trying to get a premonition.

The world around them shifted, just as Pansy experienced before. The office became grayer, and time seemed to slow. Beside her Harry looked ready to throw up, but she felt her psychic muscles give a sigh of relief as she entered this world, this realm of connections.

They appeared all around her, zigzagging and chaotic everywhere she looked. All shapes and sizes and colors and textures.

"Pansy," Harry heaved beside her, his skin going paler than pale and sticky with sweat. "Whatever you're going to do, do it quick, I don't think I can be here long…"

"Right," she reached out her hand. Last time she came here, it seemed Theo and Susan's bonds presented themselves to her without her doing anything. Both of them had been close to her physically.

But she dragged Harry with her into this realm, the bond between them lit up like a Lumos, one made of a thick rope of gold. Catching her eye.

A solid cord with no purple in sight. She expected another silk thread, thinking of the representation of the other bonds she saw. Both the bonds she assumed were her connection to Theo and Susan had that purple silk. Again, she assumed the purple represented her. Her psychic powers had always manifested in the royal color, the same color as her eyes.

Hand cradling beneath the cord of gold she brought it up to those eyes, this bond buoyant as the others, bending to her touch, not weakening. She realized the gold was transparent, hollow. It protected a core of shimmering purple streaks that looked exactly like her psychic energies.

Because, she realized with clarity, her relationship with Harry was different from the one she had with Theo, the one she had with Susan. He saw her as his best friend's wife. Someone to be protected.

"Pansy," Harry said again, his breathing becoming heavier and heavier.

"Sorry, Harry," she dropped their bond. She wasn't there for that. She needed to focus and find Benji.

Her Shadow Spirit. With the promise of no return, she realized with a stroke of terror. Had she sent Benji to his death, or rather, a more permanent ending?

Her hand came out and she thought of the little boy who needed her help, a child who lost his life too early and spent decades in the walls of the Ministry, watching.

A psychic bond came to her hand, weak and barely formed, of translucent blacks and greys that meddled into purples and blues and back again. This wasn't a letter.

This wasn't some object.

The bond was a living, breathing thing, a link, full of life and emotion. The Conjunction lent her power, cosmic power, enough to flood herself and Harry through. The duo lit up brighter than any bond, soaked in the fiery purple of her psychic gift.

It pumped her full of energy, her psychic muscles stretching pleasantly, her heart soaring. This is what she was meant to do.

When the fire faded, they stood in a dark and dusty home with wood panels along the wall.

Both of them stark naked.

"Oh, god," she covered herself with her arms, turning on her toe. "Don't look Harry!"

"I'm going to hurl," he told her right before she heard the sounds of vomiting.

"Uh, not going to lie to you Harry. That's hurting my feelings just a little bit," she tiptoed across the dirt and grime covered rug to a door that opened into an even worse looking bathroom, missing the toilet and the sink, black and red graffiti painted on the walls. A broken tub the only thing in the small room.

He continued throwing up for a whole minute it felt like, while she explored the main room carefully, keeping herself from touching any of the dirty, musty smelling furniture. The second door she opened revealed a closet.

Unfortunately empty.

Finally done, Harry stood up and she got an eyeful of his back. "Whatever you did, please, for the love of Godric, don't ever do that to me again Pansy."

"What was it like?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Like being sucked through a straw, blinded and ears plugged, with lungs full of jello, I couldn't breathe or see anything," he finally looked around. And realized he was naked.

"My clothes! PANSY WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?!" he threw himself behind a covered couch, though the cover was filthy and falling apart.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know it would do that!"

He popped his head out from above the couch and looked right at her. They met each other's eyes.

"Neville can't know about this, he'll kill you if he thinks you've seen me naked."

"Pansy!" Harry practically screamed. "My wand was in my robes! I'm wandless!"

Uh oh. That might have been the more pressing problem. She patted her own hip, her very bare, very naked hip, thinking of the Willow wand that should have been stored there, if she were still wearing the same clothes. "At least I got us here, right?"

With a puff of dark air, Benji appeared between them. "Whoa!" His eyes turned appreciative. "Pansy you are one fine wo-man."

"Benji, look away! This is inappropriate, I'm a married woman and you're… technically a child," Pansy hid behind the closet door, but kept her head poked out so she could talk. "And where have you been young man? You disappeared! You were supposed to come right back after you found out who wrote the letter!"

"Well excuse me for trying to help," Benji rolled his eyes. "I appeared here, in this house, and I couldn't leave. You're the one that left me here all night and all day! Do you know how hungry I am?"

"I assume there's no one else here, by the state of this place," Harry said calmly, though he continued to hide behind the broken couch.

"No," Benji said. "There's someone here. Two someones. They're like me, except I'm half solid. But they don't know your here. Yet."

"Benji, can you find us some clothes?" Pansy asked. "And, did you say you can't leave the house?"

"Nope, dunno why," he shrugged and disappeared in a puff only to come back a moment later carrying a bundle of clothes. Ones she recognized.

"I had this vision," Pansy said a few minutes later, staring at Harry's bright blue colored romper. "I knew this was coming and yet I'm still surprised."

Benji laughed from his perch on the back of the couch. "It says 'Hot Lips' on your butt!"

"What?" she turned around, trying to see the back of her shorts. She could just see the end of glittery red letters on her right cheek. "Better than being naked," she reminded herself. "Way better than being naked."

"Let's just look around and try to find our way out of this, okay?" Harry walked by her fidgeting uncomfortably with the too short shorts of the romper. "And then, afterwards, I'm cutting back your consultant hours."

"Sooo," Pansy turned to Benji, trying not to think about how desperately she needed a bra, and said, "Whoever sent the letter came from this house?"

He pointed upstairs with his index finger and gave her a nod, his dark hair falling over his eyes.

They, the three of them, walked the house together, looking for anything. All the windows were boarded up, the doors nailed shut. Dust and dirt and graffiti covering everything else. "Don't be so upset with me Harry, how else would we have gotten here?"

"Now see, Pansy, there's this thing called Apparation and I'm not bad at it. I could have brought us both here, with clothes, and our wands."

"And how would you have known where to Apparate to?" Pansy asked with a sweet smile. "We're here to help, let's help."

"I like helping, helping is my thing. I just prefer to do it with a wand next time," he moved a broken chair from their path down a hallway. "Are you getting anything from this place?"

"No," she didn't bother trying to get a vision. It wouldn't work for one, and she wasn't going to throw herself against the walls looking for the shadows because she had Benji this time. "Should we split up? You look for a way out while I try to find the shadows?"

Because it seemed like no matter how much of the house they explored, they couldn't find an exit.

"I don't know," Harry kept looking around, listening to a haunting moan wash over the walls as if on cue. "What if they're malevolent?"

"Isn't that why you're here? Isn't that why you sent me here, when I could have chilled at your house and eaten more breakfast!" Benji drawled on. "To stop them? Aren't you two supposed to be heroes?"

"Us?" Harry raised his eyebrows, the old joke slipping right off his tongue.

"Never," Pansy completed for him.

"I think this is a squat house," Harry said. "Probably homeless kids."

"Yeah, until the shadows ran them out," Benji shivered, sending his hair out in waves. "They aren't nice, Pansy. You probably shouldn't be here."

"You're worried for me?" Pansy looked at Harry with a grin. "My question is, if they are shadows like you, then how did they send those letters?"

A giant crash came from above, wooden boards crashing into them. She could hear a raunchy, manic feminine laugh as she reached forward, grabbing onto Benji's shirt and pushing him out of the way. In the process, she took the direct hit of the boards that would have hit him.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

That quickly she went from standing to horizontal, on her side. She reached up and attempted to move the largest of the wooden boards that fell on her, seeing Benji standing right above her head. Strange, but her arm just wasn't moving as easily as it usually did.

"You must be the biggest idiot alive," he told her. "Why'd you do that for? I'm already dead!"

Harry appeared the next second, grabbing the sharp and splintered wood and pulling it off her. "Agree with the kid, Pans. What were you thinking?"

Instinct. She wasn't thinking. Benji might act like a jaded middle aged loser who never lived up to his full potential, but he looked like a 4 year old. "My bad, I'll just let him be impaled next time, shall I?"

Harry's hands took her own and he pulled her to her feet, the bond between them coming to life in a way it hadn't been before. She could see it. She looked to Benji and spotted the shadowy bond that connected them. It made her shiver. Or it might have been the giant gash beneath her shoulder blade. Would that explain why she couldn't stop shaking?

"Uh, so how close is this Conjunction thing again?"

Harry looked at his watch, "It's begun already, why?"

She felt like she drank 8 espresso cappuccinos and replaced her blood with caffeine. Was blood important? She couldn't remember. She had so much brewing to do, and a lot of things she wanted to get done before Neville got home! Like clean up the bathroom, replacing his garden shears with the new Gadget Extreme pair that he mentioned wanting, and then-

"Right," she held up her hand, mentally telling herself to slow it down. Energy from the bonds had her hyped up. "Powers from beyond suck, just so everyone is aware."

"Noted," Harry wrapped an arm around her and they started walking again. "Pansy, what exactly is the plan here? I'm useless without a wand and you seem ready to collapse."

"The plan," her teeth started chattering. "The plan is to find these shadows that somehow sent us a bloody letter, get them to move on, and then help Benji move on. Easy."

"She really is nuts," Benji skipped up ahead and stopped at the second floor staircase, peering up into the darkness. "I'm not going up there, I did my part. You said all I needed to do to move on was to help you and here you are. I helped. So… do your thing. Send me into the afterlife. I'm ready."

"I told you that I think you have to help me before I can help you," Pansy said though she shook like a drug addict in withdrawal. "I don't know for sure, I'm winging it right now."

"Winging it? Great," Benji turned and stuck up two middle fingers. "Wing this."

Then he disappeared.

Harry stopped them at the bottom of the stairs, listening as a that haughty female laughter she heard before grew louder. "Are you sure we should go up there? I'm not liking this at all, Pansy. I think we should get out of here."

Immediately shaking her head, she held onto Harry while trying not to drown in their bond. She couldn't wait for this Conjunction to be over, and if her powers remained the same, well… her and Neville were moving. Far, far away. "What's the difference Harry? Between a 'shadow' as we've been calling it, and a ghost?"

"A ghost is a magical person who decided to stay on earth after death," he answered her question though she could tell he was more than curious about what she was thinking.

"I think shadows are souls who got stuck here after death. Benji died all alone and didn't know how to navigate to the next life."

"And these two?" Harry asked, pointing up the stairs. The creepy laughter getting heavier and heavier.

"I don't know but what if they died in 1513? When the first letter was written? I can only see them because of the Conjunction. What if every time there is this exact Conjunction, Mercury, Saturn, the Full Moon, in the night sky, another letter appears? And these shadows can torment the world for a time? We have to stop them now, Harry. Because I most likely won't be around for the next Conjunction."

She went to climb the stairs, ready to do whatever she had to, when Harry put a hand on her shoulder. "Pansy, I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me you can do this."

Violet met emerald, their bond flaring to hypersensitivity. "Harry, I can do this. I was made to do this."

"Neville's going to kick my ass when he gets back," he said, helping her up the first step.

oOo

Her breath frosted in front of her face, teeth chattering, and body humming with the threads of thousands of bonds that connected her to friends and family and everyone in between. The little hairs on her arm stood straight up and a wave of nausea washed over her.

Focusing on her soulmate bond helped, but only just. Neville was an ocean away.

Harry and her opened the attic door and she immediately felt their presence. Two shadows, two evil beings. She could tell the difference between them and Benji right away, feeling almost bad for thinking Benji had been insidious and malevolent at their first encounter.

"Cue cliche not all darkness is inherently evil. Bad seer, bad," she mumbled to herself. She should have known better, thinking back. She knew evil. Benji was not anything like the vile, looming presence that corrupted an otherwise normal, if run down, looking attic.

Even Harry could tell something was wrong, his stance screaming his discomfort. Or it might have been the romper.

She took a deep breath and cracked her knuckles in preparation, just like Neville did a million times before. "Just stand there and look pretty, Harry."

It took every bit of her courage to walk into that darkness. She tried to be like Harry or Ron, tried to be like her husband. They would be running straight into that darkness with their war faces on and ready to do battle. Even knowing she was the only person who might be able to do something about these shadows wasn't enough to get her up to charging speed.

Instead, she cautiously approached the vile darkness, trembling as energy poured into her from the myriad of bonds she could feel, and feeling scared out of her mind thinking of the task ahead.

The shadows rolled around her as she walked, swirling in a silent storm, taunting her psychic senses as well as her physical. Cold nipped at her toes and bare legs, beckoning her further into the attic, further into their darkness.

Pansy thought of cloaking herself in her psychic power like she did with Benji, pulling these shadows into the physical world. But something stopped her, some idea that giving them solid form would only make them more of a threat than they were.

Instead, she did the thing she probably wasn't supposed to do.

She let them overcome her.

And learned that evil had a taste.

Shadows swarmed the air around her, clogging her breath and filling her lungs with a thickness that tasted like rotted earth and ash. It pressed into her, cutting her off and isolating her, filling her eyes with darkness.

Until all she knew was the shadows, two distinct souls. One reached out with shadow hands, clawing at her face whip speed. She felt the gashes form across her face and when she brought a hand up to her cheek, her fingers came away with blood.

"Good thing you're so pretty, Pansy. Because you don't have brains to spare," Benji said, appearing beside her.

"Benji! Get out of here, before you get hurt!"

"They can't hurt me, you moron! I'm already dead!"

"I don't care if you're already dead, I don't want you getting harmed because of me," she snapped at him in pure anger.

"Pansy! Watch out," he darted forward and pushed her out of the way just when the shadow went to slash at her again. He took the full force of the hit and rolled into the corner.

He sat up on his hands and knees and looked up to her. "Are you useless or what? Use The Conjunction! Hel-lo!"

Without another word, the world around her shifted to gray and under the full force of The Conjunction, the bonds lit up like a festival, nearly blinding her. But it shone light on a dark place, giving the shadows a definitive form. Showing her the chains that kept the shadows connected.

Chains.

She thought of the letter. No one will ever find You, it said.

Pansy reached forward, the blood on her hand a bright red flame, teeming with life. She couldn't take from the bonds of those she connected with, her friends and family. So she broke off little pieces of herself and sent them all out, through each and every one of those bonds, knowing those friends wouldn't let her down.

Like a riptide, those little pieces of herself were swept out and carried away before returning full force. The blood on her hand burst into a fury of flames and ignited the chained bond between the shadows, Pansy shoving as much of her psychic energy into it as she could.

It burned and burned and the shadows screamed around her, withering in the agony. When the chain finally turned away to ash, the shadows split apart and Pansy fell away from the gray world so hard she landed on her ass.

"Pansy!" Harry rushed forward the moment he spotted her, jumping to attention.

"No, stay back!" she warned him, shooting her hand out with a clear stop motion.

The darkness of the attic became less, and before them, the two shadows became two distinctive human forms. A man and a woman.

"No…" the woman said in horror, her grayness fading into pale skin and hair that might have looked silver if it were healthy. Instead it hung limply around her ears, the skin beneath her eyes sunken. "You're supposed to me mine, forever…"

The man, a little younger, with long lines up and down his cheeks, his fists clenching in anger, rushed forward. "Mother," his lip curled. "You kept me in this world for 500 years… now no one will ever find you!"

His hands encircled his mother's neck and in a burst of white light, the two of them disappeared. Like flipping a switch, her connections shut off without warning and she fell over onto her back, the wind knocked out of her.

"This is why you're here, Harry," she coughed once. "To rescue me. Again."

Then she passed out.

oOo

When Pansy came to, Neville Longbottom was sitting beside her bed, rubbing the deep gashes on her cheek with a thick, sticky reddish brown cream. His calloused fingers were gentle and he hadn't noticed she woke up. Yet.

She realized she ended up in a bed at St. Mungo's, a private room with only one bed and a gauzy blue curtain over the window that was parted, letting in a lot of light. She didn't think she would be able to fall asleep in the dark anytime soon.

Gods, she missed him while he was gone. Next time he had to go out of town, she was going too. Not even a celestial event could stop her. She took the moment for herself, even as her body screamed she needed more rest, to admire the hard lines of his handsome face. The scars around his eyes were deep, more so on the right than the left, and his tired eyes were a deep blue color that reminded her of the ocean.

The same that colored their soulmate bond.

Psychically, her mind stretched out, and all she found was that one bond she shared with her husband and her husband alone. Alone in her head, it shone as the single beacon, in purples and blues, smelling like Neville's garden. No other connections, no more bonds pumping her full of psychic energy she could barely contain. No gray world. Only herself.

Her relief must have been great enough that he felt it, because he looked up and met her eyes. Narrowed his own.

"I go through hell and high water to get everyone we know to promise to look after you while I'm away, and what happens?" he asked in a low voice that had her stomach turning into heat.

"Oh are we going to have a fight?" she asked, her voice husky with sleep. "I like what happens after our fights."

He growled, but his lips turned up in a smile giving his real feelings away. She could feel it right in her heart. He was just as happy to see her as she was to see him. She said, "I thought you weren't coming home until Sunday?"

"It is Sunday, baby," he continued rubbing the cream into her face. The relief instantaneous. Seeing Neville had delayed the realization of how badly those cuts hurt.

"I've been out for two days?" she asked in surprise, but maybe she shouldn't have been. That fight with the shadows had taken just about every bit of the little power she had.

Then her heart sank. Two days?! The Conjunction was over! "Oh no! Benji!"

Maybe it was the psychic battle, maybe it was the forced rest, but tears came to her eyes without permission and made her lip tremble. Benji asked her for help and instead of helping him move on, he helped her break the forced captivity of a lost soul. The Conjunction came and went, she wouldn't be able to see him. To help him.

Neville set the cream aside and gathered her in his arms as she sobbed. "Whoa, whoa, sweetheart, what's the matter?"

"I failed him," she cried into his shirt. "I failed him…"

"She's crying? Really? What a wimp."

That dry voice had her sitting straight up.

Neville turned in his seat, immediately putting himself between her and her shadow spirit, a wand coming to his hand in preparation.

"No, no wait," she patted her husbands steady arm. "It's just Benji!"

"Just who?" he asked with a heavy amount of suspicion. "That door is supposed to be locked."

"I didn't come in through the door, moron," Benji crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, the sleeves of his green shirt still too long. Then to Pansy he said, "I could sense you were awake so, I thought I might as well come and check on you."

"How though?" she asked, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "How can I see you? The Conjunction is over."

He shrugged, "You tethered me to this world when you made me half solid. No big deal or anything."

"Benji!"

"This tender moment is slightly ruined by your horrendous looking face," he told her with a cringe, but she climbed out of the bed on wobbly legs anyways and sank down to her knees when she hugged him, nearly crushing him in the process.

But who cared? He was dead anyways. He smelled somewhat of the gray world, but unlike the other shadows, Benji hadn't rotted away. He even felt a little warm, though nowhere near as warm as a live person. But the skin on skin contact sent her straight into a vision and she went happily, the psychic stretch normal. As it should be.

She watched a dark headed woman with stick straight hair and dark eyes tilted up at the sides holding the hand a little boy in a long sleeved green shirt and brown trousers walking down a familiar hallway at the Ministry of Magic.

"Kiddo, stay here a few minutes." She smiled down to her son, handing him a small toy figurine of some Quidditch player. "I have to speak to my boss, I'll be right back."

Benji shrugged, took the figurine and collapsed into the bench outside of an office with all the drama of a toddler going on 30.

Pansy followed Benji's mother into the office and watched the door close with a creak, realizing it was the last time the mother would ever see her son. She immediately turned to her boss and folded her arms, giving him a no nonsense look Pansy had seen on Benji multiple times. "Listen here, Mr. Craster, you're going to give me more hours. I work twice as hard as any of the assistants here and I got a kid to feed."

Mr. Craster barely took note of Benji's mother, giving her a cold shoulder as he continued to scribble across a piece of parchment with an overly large quill. The moment seemed to stretch out before he finally spoke.

"Your child has no bearing on the hours you get, Mrs. Barns. Or is it Miss now? Do remind me what happened to your husband?"

"What happened is he's a deadbeat who left me high and dry with a kid, but I'll do anything to keep my son safe and fed, you know I deserve the hours. Please, Mr. Craster, I'm begging you."

"Perhaps if you'd married one of your own kind," Mr. Craster said, face distorting with disgust. "You wouldn't be in this dreadful situation, Lydia."

Lydia. That was the mother's name. Pansy watched Lydia's face mirror Mr. Craster's, but for very different reasons. "So you won't give me the hours because my kid's a half-blood? You're a real piece of work."

"I said no such thing," Mr. Craster finally set his quill down and looked up to meet Lydia's gaze. "Clearly you have the wrong temperament for this high stress job, Lydia. It might be time to release you from your contract."

Pansy watched as Lydia begged for her job, to no avail, for another ten minutes before leaving the room red-faced and seething with anger. All she wanted was to take care of her son, Benji. Pansy knew, in the way that she just knew things, that Lydia would do anything for him. That she loved Benji more than anything.

She pulled herself from the vision before she had to watch the trauma of Lydia looking for her missing son, coming to with arms locked around Benji's neck. Crying all over again. "Your mother…"

Benji pushed away, clearly uncomfortable.

Pansy stood and straightened out the long hospital gown she wore, sniffling and upset. Behind her, Neville placed a hand on her shoulder, centering her in an instant. She wiped at her face again and continued. "You can go anywhere now, why don't you go see your mother? Lydia?"

"How do you know her name?!" Benji demanded, his discomfort turning to anger in a flash.

"I had a vision, of the day you went to the Ministry of Magic with her."

"Great, so, you got to see how she abandoned me? Left me to die."

"No," Pansy argued. "She went to beg her boss for more hours, because she couldn't afford to feed you and she loved you more than anything. She didn't abandon you, Benji, I swear it."

"You're lying, people lie all the time."

"They do," Pansy agreed. "I don't, not about my visions, and especially not to you."

"Why not? I'm just some kid, remember? What's so special about me? And anyways - she's dead! I ... I already checked..."

Oh gods, her heart broke for him.

"Because my mother left me too," Pansy told him, voice breaking, feeling the heartbreak of missing Denise. Wishing things had been different at the end. It was something she had to come to terms with, knowing her mother chose to pass on the Gift to Pansy so Pansy could go on to stop monsters and the like, helping people.

She said it before, she would say it again. Hindsight was a bitch.

"She hurt me, and she left me," Pansy repeated, throat thick with tears. "But she never not loved me. And I bet, if Lydia is dead, she's waiting for you on the other side, Benji. She's waiting for her son."

He shook his head, his own big round dark eyes turning watery. "What if she's not? What if she moved on without me? What if she wants to do to me what that shadow did to her son?"

"What if she is? Don't you want to find out?"

The moment stretched out, tense and charged, before Benji stepped forward and wrapped himself around her leg. He looked up at her with big dark eyes, looking like the child he was when he died in 1982. "You kind of look like her, you know?"

The wind got knocked out of her with his words, and with a soft glow of white light, Benji disappeared.

oOo

Another patient came to visit Pansy, an older man with a bandage wrapped around his neck. He resembled a walrus with his white beard shaped in a square pattern around his mouth and with his balding head and he didn't care one bit that Neville stood guard, glaring threateningly at anyone who dared approach too close.

He walked right up and grabbed Pansy's hand, shaking it with a little too much strength, nearly shaking her right out of bed. "I hear you're the one to thank for my recovery, young lady. Can't express my gratitude enough!"

"Me?" Pansy said after a few moments of trying to orient herself. She waved Neville away, and blinked up at the man. "I'm afraid you must be mistaken, I'm a patient myself."

"Well now, that lovely healer, Healer Bones is her name, she told me to thank you myself. Had a flobberworm burrow its way into my spine," he pulled down the edge of his bandage to show the gaping hole in the back of his neck. "Couldn't get it out to save my life, that pretty little redhead took some silk out her hair and got the little bugger right out. Said flobberworms hate the feel of it. Makes them uncomfortable! Who knew!"

Pansy grinned, thinking of that strange instinct to bring Susie that piece of silk. The Conjunction had put her visions on hold to give her the power to break the bond between the two shadows and set their souls free. But the universe still pointed her in the right direction to help people.

"Well, Mister…"

"Firstorm, Angus Firstorm!"

"Mr Firstorm, I'm Pansy Longbottom, it's lovely to meet you."

"Likewise, little lady! Likewise," he joyously shook her hand and Neville had to hold her in place this time, otherwise the man would have sent her flying. "And if you ever need some welding of the magical variety done, you just give me a call, little lady!"

oOo

The next day, reunited with her wand and dressed in her purple robes, she Apparated with Neville to the Ministry of Magic and did a little digging. Just enough to find out that a one Mr. Dex Craster had been killed in the violent take over of the Ministry during her 7th year. It wasn't satisfying enough to her to know he died after being in his position for years longer than he should of. But that was the thing with knowing too much. She had to live with it at the end of the day.

In Harry's office, Pansy sat with Neville and spoke to Harry about the events that put her in St. Mungo's and what happened to Benji. How the moment she spotted the chain between the two shadows, she knew one of them wasn't there by choice.

How she knew to break that bond, well, she couldn't explain that part. Only that she knew. Same way she knew the sky was blue and that the ocean was salty and that she had a blue eyed man who love her to the ends of the world.

"You said you thought your power was growing," Neville reminded her gently, though he kept shooting Harry a stern glare all during their conversation.

"It wasn't, though." She explained about The Conjunction, the celestial event that lent her the power to see human connections instead of visions. How at first she lost her psychometric talent, only getting visions through people before that went away as well, until she could literally leave the physical realm and see the world where those human connections were visible. "It's what I needed. I don't have the power to make shadows move on, I could only do what was needed to help them move on themselves."

Harry pushed forward a newspaper clipping from one of the local Muggle papers. "Three people died in that house this week, apparently by suicide. I did a little research, Pansy. Same thing happened every time the Ministry received a letter, in that very same house. It used to be an orphanage centuries ago."

With the clipping he added two very old photos of a man and a woman.

Mother and Son.

"Bertund and Martha Brittermaid," Pansy read their names out loud.

"Bertund lost three wives before he realized his mother was the cause of their deaths, he confronted her, and Martha kept him prisoner for a time before she killed them both."

Pansy nodded, though she couldn't understand for a second how someone could do such a thing. The bloody letter must have been mother writing to son. "Even in death she couldn't let her son go," she said sadly. "The things mothers do for their children…"

"And this," Harry held up a copy of the most recent Daily Prophet. It showed a picture of Harry showing up at St. Mungo's with her, in their romper and Hot Lips! clothing. "Hermione and I are going to take care of this."

She reached forward to take the paper and read whatever ridiculous article they decided to write about her this time, but Neville snatched it out of her hands just as she caught the top line: Infamous Seer Pansy Longbottom Spotted Kidnapping Head Auror Harry Potter!

"What on earth are you two wearing?" Neville's mouth dropped open as he watched the picture.

"Honestly!" she scoffed. "It's a picture of you taking me to St. Mungo's, how am I 'kidnapping' you? You're carrying me!"

"Can you explain about the shorts?"

"It wasn't Kingsley, it was the office assistant that came with him, and he's since been relieved of his position."

"Three times I went to the gray world, but only once did I change my physical position when I left. That must be why they found our clothes and wands in your office."

"Found your clothes?"

"Yes, darling," she patted her husbands knee affectionately. "Harry and I have now seen each other naked. It's not a big deal."

Neville methodically crumbled up the newspaper in his hands before crossing his arms and narrowing his gaze in Harry's direction. "I'm never going out of town again. I seem to recall you promising me you'd keep her out of trouble."

Harry shrugged. "Be pissed at me all you want, Nev. But we both know she's more than capable of taking care of herself." Then he added in a proud tone, "She did a good thing for the world."

That left her with only one question. "Harry, why didn't the Ministry realize people were dying when the letters came?"

"Why else?" Neville growled.

"Because they were Muggles," Harry informed her in a bitter tone. "The Ministry doesn't, and won't, pay attention to them unless it's to cover their own asses. I'm going to change that."

It was a vow.

oOo

On their way out, she and Neville ran into Ron. Wearing a full rubber suit.


End file.
